Autism and Religion

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Yeah, I've been there myself recently. It helped that the religion I was a part of (Mormonism) is one that believes that people with other faiths can make it into their version of heaven. My take on the situation is that if God let the members of only one religion into heaven then it would be a real d*** move because it basicly becomes a lottery of which religion you are in when you die out of the way-too-many that exist. Also in most sects of Christianity unbaptized babies that die are believed to go to hell and there are a lot of people who die without even hearing about Christianity. Basicly it would mean that God is sending those people to their doom knowing full well ('cause omniscience) that they have no chance. That doesn't sound like the kind and loving character that he's made out to be, although it does make perfect sense when trying to prevent people from leaving the church using fear. Also, if God expected us to have any one religion then he would have made it super obvious which one is true. Anyway, that's just my two cents on the situation.

I should elaborate. What I believe happened is that people looked up in the sky and speculated about what happens after death and out of confusion came up with the idea of a higher power, then some con man came along and said "Hey guys, the supreme being just talked to me and he says that you should give me money and do all these things or else you will go to a horrible place for eternity when you die." What was originally innocent speculation became tainted by opertunostic con men.

I am not superstitious, therefore, I do not have a religion or believe in a deity.

Atheist.

I believe in God and always keep my faith in him no matter what (:

I am a Christian, but I have had a problem with churches.

Here is a humorous booklet (free pdf) that kind of describes my problem with churches.

http://christianpioneer.com/blogarchieve/go2church.pdf

I would like to think that you can have a serious faith and still have a sense of humor as well as not get uptight if others do not believe what you believe.

I was not raised in religion, I do not get any comfort from it, I can't say I have any faith in organized religion. I see church as a nice social club and moral center for people that need it, I think culturally it probably is pretty important to a lot of people and those that have fallen out of religion probably have suffered as a result. I see myself as outside of it, I feel as tho it is important on one hand but also have some rather derisive thoughts towards religions and the religious. The reality is that some people really do need Jesus in their life, I think the upheaval of this cultural and social structure has hurt us in more ways than we could of ever comprehended. What has filled the void?

I think my autism has definitely impacted my view of religion. Right now, I'm somewhere in between pagan and Buddhist. My religion is a lot more grounded in "reality" than it once was. I was Wiccan for most of my life, until I met someone who taught Wicca and had a horrible experience with him. He emotionally abused me to try and get me to fall in love with him (him being twice my age). He also had the benefit of being the first person I revealed my autism to, though I didn't use the word because I never connected it to what I was experiencing. I told him that pretty much everything I do as part of being social, I had to learn manually by trial-and-error, from most of the words I choose to the facial expressions and tone of voice. He didn't believe me at first, but then I guess he saw how raw my emotions were when I said it. Then he decided to use that information against me and faked social cues/told me the things he was doing to me was acceptable when it wasn't.

That whole experience turned me off Wicca. I still believe it, somewhere deep down, but that part needs to heal. It's still very triggering to me even though it happened years ago. I'm working on it. But it also gave me a healthy respect for finding spirituality in what's real and observable, because everything I experienced was based on a complete, malicious distortion of reality.

Now I'm just trying to find some peace and healing, a sense of reality, and self-acceptance. Hence, Buddhism.

I still don't know if my ASD had any bearing on my atheist perspective or not, but I suspect it did.

The main evidence that it did is that I think it's my autism that gives me a highly autonomous way of working out morality (or a code of conduct conducive to peace and harmony with others, as I prefer to call it) for myself, and I don't know of any standard religion that doesn't have "moral experts" (priests) who would seek to lecture (preach sermons) to me in an attempt to indoctrinate me with their version of right and wrong. Just like trying to teach the proverbial pig to dance, it won't work and it annoys the pig.

That covers my rejection of organised religion. As for personal belief in gods, I don't think there are any supernatural beings. That's based on the fact that I see no good evidence for their existence. There are plenty of people out there saying that supernatural beings do exist, but again I think it's my autism that makes me insist on deciding the matter for myself, and when I look at the evidence for and against deities, that tells me that there almost certainly aren't any. When I first concluded that as a teenager, I was disappointed, because the world would be a much more fun place if there was anything supernatural in it, but my sincere search for ghosts and gods turned up absolutely nothing. So I suspect that to become a believer I'd have to be capable of being socially swayed that way, and it seems that my autism prevents the hive mind from colouring my judgement like that.

The high Aspie regard for cold logic is well known, and I think religious belief is largely an emotional thing. There have been attempts to claim that belief in a deity is logical, but the counter-arguments always seem to deflate them pretty effectively, in my experience at least.

The main evidence that my autism didn't make me an atheist is that there are quite a lot of Aspies here saying that they are religious, complete with churchgoing. Assuming they're telling the truth about believing in deities and about being autistic, it seems that their autism didn't give them that same autonomy of perspective that I have. Perhaps autonomy of thought is just another dimension of the spectrum, one that I have in spades while religious Aspies are more susceptible to persuasion? And perhaps autism often doesn't really set in until we've had our views on religion shaped for us by others during early childhood? That would fit neatly, in my own case. My parents didn't do god. My early teachers did, but I was around 6 years old when they started that, the indoctrination wasn't that intense, and after accepting it uncritically for a while I began to question it, and eventually undid pretty much every last remnant of the programming.

I have a strong Christian faith. I was brought up in a non-religious family and have a degree in science but I do believe in God / Jesus / the Holy Spirit and I go to church.

It began with experiencing that the Christian adults I knew in my teenage years were kinder and more honest than others so I was drawn to them and saw their faith as something which gave them this pattern of kindness.
I explored this at university and joined the College Chapel and the Christian Union. I found the Christian Union (a student based group) a bit over the top and disingenuous but the Chapel was accepting and warm. Then I joined a local church near my home. Throughout this time I felt that my early discovery of kinder people in Christian circles to be true.

Then 20 years later I had a kind of religious experience and from then on I have believed completely.

I think my autism does affect my faith. I find people tricky. I used to think that people were mostly liars but now I see them as using fuzzy language and being inaccurate. Either way, I can't really fully trust people becuase they don't do or mean what they say. But I find God to be different - to be the one person in the universe who I can rely on to be completely true and honest and reliable. It helps me with my autism immensely.

^ What kind of religious experience did you have?

I had a massive paradigm shift in my view of the world. All the facts of my life and experience were the same but I suddenly understood a relationship between the facts which made more sense to me than anything else ever has. It's a bit like looking at a visual illusion where you see one picture and then suddenly you see another picture. The lines are all the same but the picture you see is different. The most important thing about it was that the new picture made sense of my life in a way which no other way of grouping information ever has - it made me feel whole and real and at peace.

I had been trying to understand the 'rules for living' and had studied many religions and philosophies but never found anyting that really made sense to me. Then I read a book of sermons by Martin Luther King Jnr called "The Strength to Love" and I finally properly understood Christianity and it's relationship to love and it kind of completed me as a person, made me whole and gave my life a meaning, something I could genuinely unreservedly follow. Without a hesitation I said yes to this new way of living. It's the best thing which has ever happened to me.

I consider myself LaVeyan Satanist, but religion has little to no influence in my life. I do not believe in anything.

@Jo B1 Kenobi - thanks for explaining that. Of course, I had to stop and read up on what constitutes a paradigm shift. Originally, a perspective change in the scientific realm which later translated into perspective change in other disciplines.

In Jainism we have a similar concept, it's called Anekantavada. To wit: Anekāntavāda (Devanagari: अनेकान्तवाद), meaning "non-absolutism," is one of the basic principles of Jainism that encourages acceptance of relativism and pluralism. According to this doctrine, truth and reality are perceived differently from different points of view, and no single point of view is the complete truth.

This is how I've applied that concept. I'm an atheist and, technically, Jainism is an atheistic religion. However, if you accept that there is a God, who am I to argue? I'll accept that you accept there is a God.

I like relativism. The concept dawned on me when I was in my 20s, and was amazed how it could cut through muddled thinking like a knife through butter. I never realised it was part of Jainism. I'm sure it helped me to be more tolerant of other perspectives, though I still find it hard to resist the temptation to loudly contradict absolutist dogma, and unfortunately I hear a lot of that from standard brands of religion. I've no great problem with anybody personally believing in the existence of a particular defined deity or anything else they want to, but when they start talking about it as if it's the absolute truth, without owning it as merely their opinion or personal belief, I find it hard not to wade in and "set them straight," or at least remind them that it's only their view. But perhaps that's fair enough.

I had a belief in God that fluctuated all the way up till I was 21. Now at 26 I am befuddled I could ever been so naive to believe in such a thing. I very much doubt Autism significantly impacts religious beliefs. Also, religion is generally declining in most of the western world apart from the USA. Where I live in Canada I never hear religion or God being mentioned, not even once.